Page 72 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Tansy!” said Lisa.

“Ouch,” said Collins, but he smiled at Tansy, and she reached out and squeezed his arm. Whatever ire lay between them, there was affection, too, and Nicholas had the sudden thought that Tansy must be, in some way, Collins’s family.

“Get in,” Collins told Nicholas, and he wound Sir Kiwi’s leash around his hand to bring her closer.

“Is that fluffy little pom-pom going with you?” Tansy said.

Collins clapped Nicholas on the shoulder as he passed. “He sure is.”

“Ha, ha,” said Nicholas, focused on opening the trunk. The handlefelt rusted shut. Finally it creaked upward and he began to load in their few bags, wrinkling his nose at the dirty fabric interior.

The car itself was older than any vehicle Nicholas had ever been inside: the seats were a beige vinyl that had split at some seams, revealing ragged, infested-looking stuffing, and the metal parts that encircled the wheels were bitten through with rust. Nicholas took the back seat out of habit, buckling Sir Kiwi’s carrier in beside him before dropping a treat into it and cajoling her inside.

Esther and Collins had piled into the front. Lisa was leaning through the driver’s side window to talk Esther through what seemed to be a complicated headlight situation. Collins was folded up in the passenger seat, arms crossed, clearly displeased with his position, and Nicholas was glad to be in the back seat where nothing was required of him.

He waved through the window at the two women and tilted his head back, his eyelids almost immediately sinking down as if weighted. The car started beneath him with a growl, and he felt them pull away from the curb, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes.

“Who were those people?” Esther asked.

“Lisa and Tansy,” Collins said.

“I liked them.”

“Of course you did.” His voice sounded very far away.

Then, what felt like mere seconds later, Nicholas snapped to attention. The car was moving fast. There was a blur of trees out the window instead of buildings, and Collins was kneeling backward in the passenger seat and leaning over the center console to unzip Sir Kiwi’s carrier. He froze when Nicholas cracked open his seeing eye.

“I fell asleep,” said Nicholas.

“Yeah,” said Collins. “Sir Kiwi was getting whiny stuck in her dog box.”

Nicholas waved for him to sit down and attended to Sir Kiwi himself, letting her out to explore the back seat. He felt groggy and unrested. “How long was I out?”

Collins looked to Esther.

“Thirty minutes, maybe,” said Esther. “Not long. Go back to sleep, if you want.”

He did want to, and instead dug around the pocket of his jacket and found his eye drops. His prosthetic eye felt like it had been rolled in sand. “Who were your friends?” he asked Collins.

“Lisa and Tansy,” said Collins, just as he’d said to Esther.

“Oh, sod off. What did Lisa mean when she said she couldn’t give you protection? How do they know about books? What’s this membership thing she was on about? Why’s Tansy so angry with you? Do they know about your NDA? Why—”

“Look, you can ask questions until your throat hurts, but I can’t talk about it,” Collins said. “Literally. Can’t. You want answers, you keep up your end of the bargain.”

Breaking his NDA. Nicholas squeezed another drop into his eye, resisting the urge to rub. “Does this vehicle have heat? I’m freezing.”

“It’s cranked,” said Collins, putting a hand over the front vent. Nicholas pulled his cold-stiffened hands into his sleeves and got Sir Kiwi to sit on him, but even the tiniest blankets were more effective when they didn’t wriggle.

“Feels warm to me,” Esther said.

“Nicholas is sickly,” Collins informed her.

“Oh, come on,” said Nicholas.

“Are you?” Esther asked, glancing at him in the rearview.

“He’s anemic,” said Collins. “For obvious reasons.”

---